


le bien qui fait mal

by orphan_account



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Bulimia, Child Abuse, Graphic Description, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>natsume falls back into his old habits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i give you the trigger

They were in my veins, he thinks. The youkai. So he cuts them out. He carves them out of his skin. The blood drips down his wrist, onto his thighs. Takashi takes that as a sign that they’re there too, and slices up his thighs, too. They’re deep and dripping. He feels dizzy.

He stands up, cleans off the knife, and places it right back where it was. It’s tempting to let the wounds just fester and bleed, but that would cause trouble for the ones taking care of him. So he cleans the wounds instead, bandaging them up.

It became like a ritual, to comfort himself. Get rid of his demons. Watching the blood pour out of him gave him a feeling of nausea and a strange calm.

His door clatters open. Takashi looks up, shocked. His current caretaker enters, and sees him. He gets yelled at, gets hit. Days later, he’s moved to a different house. They try at first, hiding knives, hiding anything sharp.

As usual, he messes this up, too.

The youkai get him. They distract him. They scare him. They get others to get rid of him.

He considers killing himself. That would get rid of it, right? But, he stops. What if he became one of them? Festered with rage and hurt-- Takashi simply couldn’t stand that.

They stop hiding the knives, and Takashi’s habit continues.


	2. you've aquired a taste;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he promises he won't make it too deep
> 
> that, however, is a lie

“--Ah.” Takashi looks around the room. He’s at the Fujiwara’s. He’s at home. He’s safe. He sighs, shaking. He pulls up the sleeve of his pajamas, and squints at the faint scars. “You can… only kind of see them.”

He’s glad. He doesn’t want anyone to know. They’d ask questions. They’d start hiding stuff from him. They’d lose what little trust they had in him.

He knows the scars on his thighs are visible, whitened, hard to see, but still there, etched into his pale skin.

He stares at his clothed thighs. He wants to do it again. He knows they’re not demons, now. But he can still feel them. Festering under his skin like a disease. He has to... He has to do it again.

He looks around. Sensei is out drinking.

He still has some of his old tools. He can make them small. He’ll can make sure they don’t bleed as much. He’ll make sure. It’ll be fine. He won’t go too far.

He’s lying to himself. As soon as he slices once, twice, it goes to the eighties. At first, they weren’t deep, hardly bleeding. Now they were. Bleeding a lot, actually. He felt kind of light headed…

Shit. He thinks. How am I going to hide these? I did it on my legs, hips, wrists, everywhere. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have-- they’re going to hate me. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, no, no, no. His still breathing transforms into something erratic, as he succumbs to a nearly three hour long panic attack.

When he’s out of it, it’s morning. He hides everything, absolutely everything, cleans the room, and is very, very glad it’s winter, glad that long sleeves had been invented.

Nyanko-sensei comes home, drunk, and Takashi is somewhat jealous. Forgetting would be nice, if only for a little while.

He wobbles over to Takashi, and sniffs him. “Naaatsume…. You smell like blood!” Takashi’s heart almost stops in his chest.

“...I-it… must be your imagination, sensei…!” He’s nervous, and isn’t meeting Nyanko’s eyes.

Nyanko simply huffs, and curls up on the floor. Takashi sighs with relief.

Downstairs, Touko-san calls him for breakfast.


	3. before he came

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he acts like everything is normal, but the blood is seeping through...

Breakfast was strange, for Natsume. He was acting like everything was normal. Like he hadn’t cut himself up last night. Like he hadn’t cried until he was out of tears. It wasn’t until Touko-san mentioned Natsume’s eyes were a bit red.

He shakes his head and laughs, and saying it must just be her imagination.

As he walks to school, he feels his sleeves shift against the healing cuts. It still feels strange, even after years and years of that feeling. He hoped they wouldn’t open up and bleed into his uniform.

But they did. He realizes, as he lifts up his head from the desk, class almost over. His sleeve is wet. He feels it, and realizes it’s definitely blood. He goes pale. Nausea overtakes him, but he doesn’t throw up.

He simply says he has to do something when Kishimoto and Nishimura ask him if he wants to hang out. He bumps into Taki and Tanuma, but he says the same thing, and then hides in a bathroom stall.

There, he throws up.

It feels good, actually. Getting rid of it. Sometimes, despite the delicious taste of food, he feels like he’s eating poison. Like it’s killing him from the inside out.

Now that he thinks of it, he used to throw up a lot, too.

He used to think that the food was making him see what he sees. So he never ate. Then, people forced him to eat. So he did, but would always throw it up afterward. It always felt good, and it always filled him with a sense of relief.

He figures he’ll start doing that again, instead of cutting. Cutting is hard to hide. Vomit could easily be flushed, gotten rid of.

 


	4. oh no, oh no, oh no-oh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if i fail, i'll fall apart

But he does it again, in the bath.

“It’s… pretty…” He murmurs to himself, lifting his arm up, letting the blood drip into the water, only to expand and then disappear. He watches it as it does. “People would miss me if I was gone.” He tries to convince himself.

His dinner feels weird in his stomach.

So he throws it up.

He feels much better, after he does that. He smiles to himself.

After, he’s laying down in his bed, Nyanko-sensei on his stomach. He feels kind of hungry, but, he isn’t going to anything about it. Probably because he threw up all of what he had eaten.

Nyanko-sensei is here, so he can’t do anything.

He feels kind of disappointed.


	5. a blade's kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> natsume gets caught

So he starts bringing his blades around with him. He hides them in his pockets. Whenever he feels the urge, he excuses himself, and hurries off to the bathroom.

So, there he is. Sitting, with his sleeves pulled up. The cuts look pretty nasty, but he really doesn’t care. He likes the look of them. They’re beautiful. He smiles. The door to the bathroom opens, and Takashi is very, very happy that he’s in a stall.

“Natsume?” Tanuma calls.

Shit.

“Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, I’m fine…!” He calls back, quickly wrapping the gauze he kept around his wrists back on. It was sloppy, but it would do. He pulls down his sleeves, flushes, and exits the bathroom. “Sorry, Tanuma.”

He pushes up his sleeves, just barely, but enough to get his hands clean.

It seems like Tanuma notices this.

Takashi really should have figured. Shouldn’t have underestimated Tanuma. He’s smart, and he cares.

Tanuma grabs onto Takashi’s sleeve, and he flinches. “...!”

Tanuma narrows his eyes, and lifts up Takashi’s sleeves.

As if this moment couldn’t get any worse, Kitamoto and Nishimura walk in. They see Takashi’s wrists. This is the worst, this is the worst.

His eyes stare at the ground. He thinks that maybe… maybe he really should kill himself?


	6. no kids forgive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this can't be happening.

No, no, no, no, no.

This can’t be happening.

He bites down hard on his lip. 

His breathing is erratic.

He pushes his way through his friends, pulling down his sleeves as he runs.

The teasing tone of those who had bullied him dances around in his ears.

_ Cutter. _

No. He thinks. Stop.

_ You should just die, if you want to so bad! _

You don’t understand. Please, please just stop.

_ Just die! _

Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop!

He stops running, and leans against a wall in a corridor no one goes through.

He feels the tears bubbling up.

Don’t cry. Crying won’t solve anything.

But he does anyway. He sobs.

He curls up into himself. He doesn’t even return to class when the bell rings.

It’s only after ten minutes, when everyone is in class, does he stagger to the nurse’s office.

The nurse gives him the okay to go home.

He feels kind of bad for lying, but Natsume knows he wouldn’t be able to continue without bursting into tears.

He tells Touko-san that he just felt unwell, and she seems worried, and tells him to lie down.

When he’s in bed, he collapses into a fit of laughter.

Of course he would lose everyone.

He’s just a  _ freak _ (isn’t that what everyone says?) who was only ever meant to be alone.

The laughter soon turns into tears.

Tears turn into ragged breathing and drool dripping down his chin and fingers gripping at his hair.

He feels disgusting, and can’t even convince himself to move so he can slice himself up.

Everything lapses into silence, and Natsume drifts off to sleep.

Unnoticed, Nyanko enters the room.

He notices his puffy red eyes.

He notices his wrists, the bandages peeking out of his sleeves.

He notices his hair, mussed up.

But he doesn’t say anything, simply plops into Natsume’s arms.

Natsume holds on tight, still sleeping.


End file.
